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To Dress Fish

A flat fish is fried and served with a sauce of shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, horseradish, lemon peel, red port, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil flat fish carefully until cooked through without breaking, then drain and cut off the fins.

  2. Flour the fish before broiling, except for herrings, which should be scored with a knife.

  3. Dry the fish with a cloth and flour them before frying in hot dripping or hog's lard.

  4. Fry the fish until golden and drain on a dish or hair sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Wash parsley and dip it in cold water.

  2. Fry the parsley in boiling fat until crisp and green.

  3. Combine chopped shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, scraped horseradish, lemon peel, and red port in a pot.

  4. Season the mixture with Cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and lemon juice.

  5. Boil the mixture until thick.

  6. Strain the sauce over the fish and stew gently.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish in a deep dish with the sauce and fried bread.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flat fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by boiling and then frying.
Flour
Coats the fish so it browns during frying and helps keep the skin intact.
Red port
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it reduces.
Anchovies
Contribute savoury, salty depth to the sauce as they cook down.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Scraped horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and bite to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce until thick. Reducing the port and aromatics concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce. If it is under-reduced it will be thin and watery, and if it boils too hard the port can turn harsh and bitter.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, parsley, flour, pepper, lemon, shallot, bread):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, flour, pepper, lemon, shallot, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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